So now you can stop using that old busted Bing Maps Aerial Imagery that Esri “provides” you and use some beautiful Google Maps Aerial Imagery as well as their other geo-web services:

Data Services is a new product for use with Arc2Earth Desktop. It allows you to display Google Maps Street and Imagery data directly in ArcMap (legally, A2E is now an OEM of the Google Maps API). It also includes access to other Google Maps services like Geocoding, Routing and Elevation.

Arc2Earth and Google seem to be taking on Esri and their stagnant ArcGIS.com offering (seriously, does anyone actually enjoy using ArcGIS.com?). Ballsy move if you ask me and clearly Google is going after Esri and their “cloud” offerings.

Much like you don’t want to mess with Bolo Yeung, you don’t want to mess with Google. Best of luck Esri…